My name is danah boyd and I'm a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and the founder/president of Data & Society. Buzzwords in my world include: privacy, context, youth culture, social media, big data. I use this blog to express random thoughts about whatever I'm thinking.

Web folks can’t help but LOL. They want to know if Oscar is really predicting deaths or causing them. Their discomfort is emerging through the production of LOL cats, arguing for both in that distanced way that you know comes from nervous laughter. I mean, it is kinda eerie that a cat knows that someone’s going to die before they do, right?

8 comments to cat predicts deaths, web folk LOL

Cats have always been sensitive to the emotional energy flow of humans. If two people are experiencing an emotionally intense interchange, the cat will settle bttween them. If an individual is depressed, the cat will come over, almost seeming to show concern. It is not at all unlikely that the immediate pre-death hours of a terminal patient would be marked by an ebb in the life force, to which a cat would presumably be sensitive.

Questions for further investigayion would include whether other cats exhibit a similar ability, and whether Oscar ever makes mistakes.

1) Animals can sense pain/anguish. People about ready to die may be, indeed, in significant pain.

2) Now that the news about Oscar’s alleged prognosticatory talents have gotten out, he may be causing heart attacks in shocked and horrified patients when he visits (even if they’re not visibly conscious / cogniscent)

3) Perhaps Oscar is carrying germs? And in a weakened state of immunity, he pushes sick humans over the edge? Or maybe it’s allergies?

Maybe a more pragmatic idea… cats are looking for a warm (without direct sun) and calm place to sleep. Maybe when we are passing away the body is giving a ‘last’ pulse of temperature (or the temperature of the body is already higher due to an illness).

oscar sounds pretty amazing= a gift for tuning into a vibration/sense/freaquency. few can tap into, much less understand. i marveled at the animal stories with the tsunami, how did they know to run long before the wave? man has built wonderful conveniences and luxury around himself. perhaps we forgot to be so sensitive to our fellow mans true inner state?